Thursday, September 08, 2016

Media Folks And Diplomats Even Dumber Than Gary Johnson

The U.S. newspaper of record, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the longest-serving U.S. spokesperson at the United Nations all falsely identified Aleppo as an ISIS hub.

In its report on Johnson’s gaffe, The New York Times incorrectly described Aleppo as “the de facto capital” of ISIS. The actual de facto capital of ISIS is Raqqa, which is east of Aleppo.

...That’s not all. When the Times updated the editor’s note it added at the bottom of the article, acknowledging the correction, it incorrectly described Aleppo as “the Syrian capital.” Aleppo is not Syria’s capital; Damascus is. Aleppo was the largest city in Syria before the destructive war began, but it was not the capital.

...Yet wait, there’s more: After this third error was pointed out on social media, the Times issued a correction to its correction.

The website NewsDiffs, which monitors changes in news stories, shows that there were five revisions to the Times story from 9:18 am to 12:18 pm EST.

...After Johnson’s blunder, a slew of cocksure pundits also took to the media to try to correct him — and utterly failed as well.

Christopher Hill, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, went on MSNBC to set things straight, making a complete fool of himself in the process.

Hill arrogantly disparaged Johnson, while incorrectly describing Aleppo as the “capital of ISIS.”

“I’m still trying to get my mind around that one,” he said of the libertarian presidential candidate’s ignorance. “You know, in foreign affairs there’s a lot of inside baseball that I don’t expect people to understand or follow.”

“But the capital of ISIS — very much in the news, especially in the past two days, but for last two years. And for him to draw that kind of blank — and, by the way, boy was that a blank stare on his face. I was wondering if he was talking something called ‘an Aleppo,’ and was confused by that. I couldn’t figure it out. It was just mind-blowing,” Hill continued patronizingly.

...Richard Grenell, formerly the longest-serving U.S. spokesperson at the United Nations, also incorrectly implied that Aleppo is controlled by ISIS.

“Everyone knows where Aleppo is….it’s the city Obama ignores,” he tweeted, adding the hashtag “#ISISgrowing.”